Virginia’s governor and his secular allies are furious with the citizens of Virginia.

They’re angry because voters elected a General Assembly who rejected the governor’s scheme to expand taxpayer-funded healthcare.

The Governor declared to the media that, one way or another, he will find a trick to pass his progressive agenda without approval from the voters!

This is an extremist agenda that forces taxpayers to pay for abortions.

Friend, nearly 250 years ago, a king thought he also didn't need approval from citizens to pass new laws.

We know the rest of the story.

But what some may not realize, the heart of this rebellion was the pastors who spoke like thunder from the pulpits. They organized the colonists to protect their God-given freedom.

We need pastors to speak like thunder, once again, to unite pro-family Virginians to secure a pro-family majority!

I know you agree, Robert. But I need to share something with you that might come as a surprise.

Church leaders believe all their church members vote on election day. But we've run the numbers and this is, unfortunately, not true.

Right now, races are so close across Virginia, that we need every Christian to vote.

Take a look at these figures from the last election where pro-family candidates lost to secular progressives:

Senate Seat: lost by 11 votesHouse Seat: lost by 223 votesHouse Seat: lost by 1,038 votesGovernor: lost by only 2.5 percentAttorney General: lost by less than 1,000 votes out of 2.2 million!

Plain and simple, if more Christians had voted on election day, we wouldn't have to deal with a governor who will subvert the rule of law to pass his secular agenda.

But we have a plan to change that.

Right now, my team is organizing training for pastors across Virginia, with your financial sponsorship, so they can be sure every one of their church members is registered to vote and actually votes on election day.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Virginia’s governor and his secular allies are furious with the citizens of Virginia.

They’re angry because voters elected a General Assembly who rejected the governor’s scheme to expand taxpayer-funded healthcare.

The Governor declared to the media that, one way or another, he will find a trick to pass his progressive agenda without approval from the voters!

This is an extremist agenda that forces taxpayers to pay for abortions.

Robert, nearly 250 years ago, a king thought he also didn't need approval from citizens to pass new laws.

We know the rest of the story.

But what some may not realize, the heart of this rebellion was the pastors who spoke like thunder from the pulpits. They organized the colonists to protect their God-given freedom.

We need pastors to speak like thunder, once again, to unite pro-family Virginians to secure a pro-family majority!

I know you agree, Robert. But I need to share something with you that might come as a surprise.

Church leaders believe all their church members vote on election day. But we've run the numbers and this is, unfortunately, not true.

Right now, races are so close across Virginia, that we need every Christian to vote.

Take a look at these figures from the last election where pro-family candidates lost to secular progressives:

Senate Seat: lost by 11 votesHouse Seat: lost by 223 votesHouse Seat: lost by 1,038 votesGovernor: lost by only 2.5 percentAttorney General: lost by less than 1,000 votes out of 2.2 million!

Plain and simple, if more Christians had voted on election day, we wouldn't have to deal with a governor who will subvert the rule of law to pass his secular agenda.

But we have a plan to change that.

Right now, my team is organizing training for pastors across Virginia, with your financial sponsorship, so they can be sure every one of their church members is registered to vote and actually votes on election day.

The Assembly passed a budget putting a condition on Medicaid spending: "no general or non-general funds shall be appropriated or expended" to expand Medicaid under Obamacare until a vote by the General Assembly. This condition, among other things, is what Governor McAuliffe is attempting to line-item veto.

However, The Supreme Court of Virginia Case Brault v Holleman makes clear that, if a budget includes a spending item that comes with a condition, the condition cannot be separately vetoed. To exercise his line-item veto for these conditional budget items, a governor must veto both the condition and the spending. The governor's veto would be ruled unconstitutional.

"I remain confident that the Virginia budget will be passed prior to the July 1st deadline. While the governor and Senate Democrats have seen fit to create a budget impasse for months, holding it hostage to get their way on a political agenda out of sync with most Virginians, Republicans took control of the Senate and, with the House, passed a bipartisan budget within six hours. The people of Virginia deserve better than the irresponsibility of Washington-style politics." -Delegate Taylor

Friday, June 20, 2014

As you may know, Senate Republicans took back control of the Senate Chamber last week. Within days, we called the General Assembly back to Richmond, passed a clean budget that did not include Medicaid Expansion, and brought an end to the Democrats threats to shutdown Virginia's government.

From the beginning, I strongly pushed to decouple Medicaid expansion from the budget. When the first Senate session began with Republicans back in control, we were able to pass a budget in less than six hours – something that Senate Democrats had been unwilling to do when they were in control.

To ensure Medicaid expansion cannot be implemented unless the General Assembly specifically authorizes it, I sponsored an amendment (which the media has been calling "The Stanley Amendment") that was co-patroned by all 20 Senate Republicans. The Senate approved my amendment 20 to 19, and the House concurred 69 to 31. The amendment keeps McAuliffe from legally expanding Obamacare in Virginia on his own.

Even though the bill is on the Governor's desk, the fight is far from over. On Friday, Governor McAuliffe stated that he would veto the Stanley Amendment and try to expand Obamacare in Virginia without legislative approval.

Governor McAuliffe does not have the authority to unilaterally expand Medicaid. If he ignores the Constitution by continuing on a course to do so, I am confident that he will be given a refresher course on the limits of his powers from both the legislative and judicial branches of Virginia government. Because of my leadership on this issue, and my commitment to conservative principles and traditional values, Governor McAuliffe and the Democrats have already recruited a candidate to run against me. They are determined to return the Senate to Democrat control by trying to defeat me in 2015.

Would you please contribute $20 for the 20th District so I can continue to stand up to the Democrats and their Washington-style tactics?

Terry McAuliffe will try to regain control of the Virginia Senate in 2015 and your contribution today will send a message to him – and his liberal Washington friends – that we need Virginia solutions, not Washington's problems.

Your help today will make a big difference as I fight to ensure the Senate of Virginia retains a conservative Republican majority for the duration of Terry McAuliffe's term and Barack Obama's.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Why is it that our knowledge does not align with our actions? Could it be that our knowledge is far superior to our capacity to act on it? Is our failure to act purely a flaw in human design or could it be that this seemingly lazy behavior is learned or even rewarded?

Ironically, we already "know" the answers to these questions. We just need to make a few observations...

In the 2007 Harvard Business Review article, "The Smart-Talk Trap," authors, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, observed the cause and effect of the knowing-doing gap in the world of business. As if our flawed DNA were not enough of a hurdle in itself, we are also implicitly taught in school and the workplace that "smart talk" is a substitute for action. Our misalignment of knowledge and action is learned behavior:

Smart talk is the essence of management education at leading institutions in the United States and throughout the world. Students learn how to sound smart in classroom discussions and how to write smart things on essay examinations. A substantial part of students' grades is usually based on how much they say and how smart they sound in class...

Students learn that they need only to deliver an intelligent insight -- or an intelligent critique of someone else's insight -- to impress their professors. They don't have to actually implement the recommendations or act on the insights that emerge in the conversation.

"But this is that which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and straightly conjoined and united together than they have been..."

Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning

Most of us can draw on immediate experience to recall examples of smart-talk and the knowing-doing gap. In my studies, I recall "class participation" was, indeed, a significant portion of the final grade.

What about in the business world? How many mission statements are actually carried out? How many ideas hatched in committee meetings actually make it past the meeting minutes?

What about the CEOs and managers? They may "dress for success" and appear knowledgeable, but do they even know what their smart talk means?

Consider some further observations cited in the same article by Pfeffer and Sutton:

People will try to sound smart not only by being critical but also by using trendy,pretentious, or overblown language...

Sometimes managers don't know what they're talking about when they use complex language, as we discovered when we asked a number of them to define some of the terms they used frequently -- such as 'learning organization,' 'business process re-engineering,' 'chaos theory,' and 'paradigm.'

Does this remind you of anyone? Have you ever worked for a CEO or manager that actually turned their smart-talk into action? How many of them do you feel were smarter than you? Did they obtain the leadership positions because of real action or was it a resume full of positions and certificates achieved via the path of smart talk?

I can certainly appreciate the value of a visionary leader who is a gifted smart-talker but only when they effectively put their words into action or if the leader is at least wise enough to delegate the doing to their managers and employees. I have seen evidence, both anecdotal and scientific, that corporations can only go so far on the "fake it 'til you make it" premise. Making matters worse, most organizations and their leaders are not even aware of their knowing-doing gap.

"Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion / And the response / Falls the Shadow."

T.S. Elliot, The Hallow Men

As you may have already guessed, my direction here is that the knowing-doing gap can only be closed by some form of awareness. This applies, of course, not only to organizations but to individuals as well.

The path to self-awareness, furthermore, will have us ask the more difficult questions, such as "Who am I?" and "Where am I going?"

"There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming."

Soren Kierkegaard

While our world certainly rewards smart-talkers, and I will not say that smart talk is purely negative, but my objective here is to help others awaken to their own path -- the path that ideally originates from the inner world. This awakening, if you will, almost certainly requires the shattering of conventional wisdom and the undoing of what we have been taught -- that our knowing does not need to align with our doing and, more importantly, our being -- that we are somehow smaller than our dreams.

These teachings are simply and categorically not healthy. The knowing-doing gap must be closed...

By now you've read the headlines: House and Senate Republicans united to pass a budget that addresses Virginia's $1.5 billion revenue shortfall and does not include Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.

As I mentioned in my previous email, the shortfall was filled partially by accessing the Commonwealth's rainy day fund. The balance was filled by cutting spending.

Despite these cuts, we were able to protect funding for K-12 education, mental health reforms, and investments in the Virginia Retirement System. For detailed information about the budget, please click HERE.

At no point did the budget include language that would have allowed the Governor to expand Medicaid without the approval of the Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission. However, because reports suggested that Governor McAuliffe may act on his own to expand Medicaid, the General Assembly added a clarifying section that unequivocally prohibits the expansion of Medicaid without the approval of the legislature.

Now that the budget has passed, I am encouraging Governor McAuliffe to sign it without any substantial amendments and without inserting Medicaid expansion. We cannot afford further delays.

Thank you to all who took the time to contact me, call the Governor's office, and sign the petition urging the Governor to pass a budget. Although I expect the Governor and the Democrats will offer a proposal to expand Medicaid, I am pleased that we passed a clean budget that includes no provision for expansion. Once the budget is signed, we can return to Richmond to debate Obamacare's Medicaid expansion and its impact on the Commonwealth.